As a stay-at-home mother of two young children, I have many roles. Besides taking care of my children's physical and emotional needs, I do many things for my family. I bake bread, make yogurt and cheese, keep a large vegetable garden, and homeschool my kindergarten-aged son. I enjoy my many roles, my multiple identities. But most times, the demands of motherhood leave little time for focusing on fine art.

The past several years have been a struggle for me to maintain my identity as an artist, and I have sought various outlets to relieve my need for creativity. One of the things I have begun to explore is digital art, namely using various drawing apps on my iPad tablet. For me, it is a very foreign medium and I find myself aiming to recapture the same tactile feelings of a work on paper.

Quick gestures. That is what I have--brief moments to capture the essence of life around me, which invariably involves my children these days. Often there is no time to set up easels and paints. My sketchbook is always inconveniently placed. Although the digital medium of the iPad does not satisfy my artistic needs, I see it as an ever-handy means in which to record moments that are important to me and that inform the very core of all of my different identities.

An artist is an artist... is always an artist. It does not matter what they create. That artistic sensibility is at the very core of their being and it informs everything they do, the way they view the world, and all that they are. I do not feel ready to enter the studio with any major commitment, but I can foresee these simple digital gestures one day becoming the basis for tactile works on paper or canvas. For the time being, the iPad will have to do.